Yankees Fail To Get Away With A Victory

Lose Third In Row To Blue Jays

Yankees Are Thrown Off In The Ninth

April 17, 1992|By JACK O'CONNELL; Courant Staff Writer

TORONTO — This time the silence in the Yankees clubhouse was warranted. In their season-opening, six-game winning streak, the Yankees reacted casually after each victory and did the same after losses to the Blue Jays Tuesday and Wednesday nights at SkyDome.

Keeping an even keel was the order of the day. The loss Thursday at SkyDome was a stunner, however, the type that can leave a team speechless. Once the hottest team in baseball, the Yankees are on a three-game losing streak as the Blue Jays continue to pull away in the American League East.

It's early, everyone keeps saying, but the Jays' ninth-inning comeback for a 7-6 victory improved their record to 9-1. The second-place Yankees are 2 1/2 games behind.

"Any team with their kind of talent is capable of doing that," manager Buck Showalter said of a possible Blue Jays runaway. "There's no mystery for why they're where they are. They have talent, and they play well. That's what it takes."

The Yankees seemed to have what it took Thursday, until the bottom of the ninth. They overcame a 4-1 deficit against righthander Jack Morris and took the lead in the seventh on a two-run home run by Don Mattingly. But after working out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the eighth, righthander Steve Farr (0-1) allowed a leadoff walk in the ninth to speedy center fielder Devon White.

"Letting Devon on base put us on the defensive," Farr said. "I couldn't throw a strike for some reason. I was brain dead."

Two batters later, the Yankees were dead, period. Second baseman Roberto Alomar singled to right, his third hit, and White stopped at second rather than challenge Jesse Barfield's powerful arm. Joe Carter then singled to center. White scored the tying run as Alomar raced toward third.

Center fielder Roberto Kelly, who had thrown out a runner at home in the fifth, tried to get Alomar, but his relay sailed over third and bounced into the Toronto dugout, allowing Alomar to score the winning run.

"I had a good grip on the ball, but I threw too hard," Kelly said. "If I'd made a good throw, we would have gotten him. But the minute I let it go, I said, `Oh, no. . .' "

That was the collective Yankees response as well. They got six serviceable innings from righthander Tim Leary (seven hits, five runs, two walks, two strikeouts) and counted on their bullpen to come through. John Habyan pitched the seventh and allowed a hit and two walks, and lefthander Steve Howe pitched one-third inning, allowing a hit and a walk.

"This one hurts more than the others because we came from behind and took the lead into the ninth," said Mattingly, who also doubled in a run in the fifth, "but I'm not going to worry about it. I hope the team doesn't, either. We can't let a single loss bother us. It's a day-to-day process. The season is a long march. If somebody said we'd be 6-3 after nine games, we'd take it. If we keep that up, we'll win this thing."

If the Yankees keep up such a pace, they would win 108 games, a tall order unless you play for the Blue Jays, who regained control of the AL East in this series.

The top of their order was particularly impressive. White, after going 0-for-4 Monday night, has six hits in his past eight at-bats to raise his average from .233 to .342. Alomar, batting .341 overall, was 7-for-15 (.467) with a home run, four RBI, three walks and four runs scored in the series. Carter had three RBI Thursday, and DH Dave Winfield hit .462 with one home run and six RBI in the four games against his old teammates.

The four combined to produce the Jays' first four runs on two sacrifice flies by Carter and RBI singles by Alomar and Winfield, but a solo homer by left fielder Mel Hall in the second inning and a two-run homer by Jim Leyritz in the fourth kept the Yankees close. Mattingly's homer, the third off Morris, put them ahead momentarily. They had a shot at insurance runs in the ninth when two walks and a third-strike wild pitch by Duane Ward (1-0) filled the bases with two out, but Hall flied out.

"This will be eating at me until the next time I get on the mound," Farr said. "I don't like L's. I want a minimum of them this year. It's too early to get concerned about [the Blue Jays]. We don't play them again until June. They're no slouch. They'll beat a lot of teams other than us."